Yesterday was a challenging and intense day. Strength work for terrified muscles in physical therapy. It helped… and it wasn’t fun!
My chair was calling when I got home. Comfort food. Weighted blankets. Kind of like hibernating!
Then, news.
Witnesses and family members from Minneapolis testifying before Senate and House Democrats. Hard stories to hear. Harder, still, to tell. Renee Good’s brothers speaking, tears in their eyes. Aliya Rahman struggling to express her experience as a differently able person with communication and mobility challenges, detained by ICE without reason, except – presumably – her skin color. And elected leaders, with tears in their eyes. (MS NOW reports that, though invited, no Republicans attended the forum.)
I, too, had tears in my eyes, so I turned off the news coverage and reached for my Medicine Basket. A bit of musing about paintings. Lots of journal notes. Slightly delayed Morning Pages. Anxiety about some unclear questions.
And a tidal wave of memories!
Hungary. Just about now, in 1989. A group of seminary students on an adventure known as Alternative Context. Before the Eastern Block fell.
Russian tanks playing target practice games in farmers’ fields. Being treated like unwelcome radical foreigners in airports. Especially the women among us. Touring a rabbinic seminary where women were “not permitted”. Where frost covered the walls inside the buildings, and adding new books to the library had been illegal since before the World War.
And, for this kinesthetic processor, perhaps the biggest memory of all… of literally throwing our luggage from a moving train and leaping into a snow bank to avoid a border crossing, where we Americans could have been immediately arrested.
Add to all this, the fact that my son was home with neighbors in the Village at Columbia Theological Seminary, postponing his ninth birthday party until my return.
And, yes… these memories show up about this time, every year. (Perhaps it’s the weather!) Today, though, the trigger was the voices of human beings, in the United States of America, trying desperately to talk some sense into the nation, because what was happening, then, in Hungary, is feeling way too close to home, now.
Then I heard it, deep inside my heart.
It’s ALL-IN time!
Frankly, I’d kind of assumed I was already there. Now, I know more!
And, yes… there’s a new book coming. First, though, I need to start over on my #Alchemist painting. And #Mother Nature’s friends, the Manatees, need some more attention.
It really is all part of the journey, if only we have the courage to notice!
Which brings us to questions… what are YOU noticing? And, how can I help???
If you have big questions, too… if you’re ALL IN… let’s talk! I have space for ONE new 1:1 dreamer/client looking for some new tools and guidance along the way. Click here and the calendar elves will hook you up with 45 minutes, on me, to explore possible roads ahead!
